“A whale?”
“Black whale. Immense. O’ course, I’m not sure what other color a whale would look like at night, and no one ever says, ‘Oh, take a looksie at that relatively small whale.’ ” Gunner twisted his lips. “Heard plenty of sailor stories, even when men weren’t in a hallucino-jammy—halloosina—halluxination storm. But a whale? I near whipped a man this mornin’ what wouldn’t stop goin’ on with his lies, swearin’ a black whale nudged the port quarterdeck, like a little kiss.”
What the hell? There hadn’t been whales in the Cerulean Sea in centuries. Scholars said the closing of the Everdark Gates had choked off some essential migration route, either sealing them out while they were gone or keeping them in to die.
“That’s where you sleep, innit?” Gunner asked. His cunning eyes glittered.
“Eh?” Gavin asked. He could tell the question held some kind of danger, but he had no idea why.
“Port quarterdeck’s where you fold your hands, aye?”
“What’s it matter? It didn’t happen,” Gavin said. “You said so yourself.”
“I know it di’n’t happen. You know it. But when men who oughta fookin’ hate a Guile start believin’ mythical beasties o’ the deep are paying homage to ’im, I gotta ask who they think you are. I esk that, and then I gotta esk myself who you think you are. Mebbe you been plyin’ some o’ that Guile grease, pullin the world ’round the tackle o’ yer desires, eh? Liftin’ men with the halyard o’ yer will, all tricksy like ya be. Mebbe I gotta clap ya back in chains to reminder everyone what you is?”
“I’ve said nothing to them,” Gavin said. It was almost literally true. Going on a mission like this, they were all dead men already. No need to bond with his enemies.
“Who is ya, Guile? Yestiddy you’d said you’d fight, afore your end. Whaddaya see when you look in the mirror? A fighter?”
What kind of question was that? Of course Gavin was a fighter.
“You fightin’ me, Guile? After all what I done for ya?”
Gunner gripped Gavin’s face suddenly, his hands sharp and hard with callus and sinew. He wrenched Gavin’s chin toward himself and bored his eyes into Gavin’s.
Gavin accepted it. Maybe he only had been a fighter. Maybe his talk of fighting at the end yesterday wasn’t a wry boast; maybe it was an empty boast.
“O Dazen Guile,” Gunner mocked. His eyes were glittering mirrors as dark and sharp and dangerous as living black luxin. “O Master of Land Ways and Sea Ways, Man of Low Cunning and High Artifice, what are ye now?”
What. Not who.
Gunner released his chin, abruptly dismissive.
He who had flown, literally flown, in the peerless machina he’d dubbed his condor, tasting a freedom no one ever had before; he, a genius whose field of play had encompassed the sky itself—he himself was being dragged where he didn’t want to go, blackmailed, afraid, passive. He couldn’t even blame actual chains now, as he might have when he’d been a slave—
—Enslaved! It’s different!
He was crippled. Half-blind. Enslaved, yes. But enslaved, not a slave. His bondage had been a temporary condition, not an identity. Emperor Gavin Guile had setbacks, not losses. He was Gavin Guile, victor. Never Gavin Guile, victim.
But really.
Seriously now.
How long has it been since that was true?
“You really t’ink you’re gonna fight the suckin’ sand? Then why’d you wander into this bog in the first place?” Gunner said.
Suddenly another piece of this dangerous little man snapped into focus for Gavin. Gunner was the soul of tenacity. That was what had made him the best cannoneer in the world. When a mystery or even a whim took Gunner in its teeth, he would follow it to the bitter end. If a shot wobbled, another man might fire another ten rounds from his cannons to figure out why before abandoning it as fruitless; Gunner would empty a treasury to fire a thousand rounds until he understood exactly why one shot deviated a hand’s breadth from the last.
“That’s a shit question,” Gavin said, forgetting for a moment who he wasn’t. “The whole world’s a bog. Some stay on a safe path, some step off it unwittingly, some are led off it, and some are pushed. All that matters is that once caught in the bog, some fight, some ask for help, and some lie down.”
Gunner picked his teeth. “You been lyin’ down lots.”
That stung. When he wasn’t sunning himself, ostensibly to accustom his eyes to the brightness of the sun, but really hoping to reawaken his magic and his color vision, Gavin had been sleeping like the dead. He woke late and went to his rack early, not to plot but to sleep. He was actually starting to feel human again after his imprisonment, no longer so easily tired—but before this past year had demolished him so thoroughly, he’d been one of the most highly energetic men he’d ever known. Gunner’s barb was a reminder that he was not now what once he had been.
“A metaphor’s a gun. You gotta know its range,” Gavin said, with less defiance than he’d intended.
“Aye. But even a man firin’ at greatest random hits the mark sometimes,” Gunner said. “Like what your man Commander Ironfist done at Ru. Snatched your bacon from the coals, eh? But I guess you were speakin’ o’ metty-force. Metal farcically . . . ?”
“They trip up the best of us,” Gavin said, smirking.
Sudden as a summer squall races over the horizon, Gunner’s face went murder dark. “And how ’bout the worst of us? You got a bone to prick with me, Guile?”
Gavin blinked. “It’s, uh, it’s only an expression. I meant it could happen to any of us.”
“You di’n’t say that. And a Guile never misspeaks. And when a Guile says ‘the best of us,’ he means hisself. You meant yourself, didn’t you?”
“In this, uh, particular instance, I—You know something, Gunner? Captain Gunner, I mean. Sir.”
“Something?! Do I know something?!” The little man drew himself to his full height and grabbed his wild beard in a defiant fist. He slapped his chest. “Cap’n Gunner knows half the mysteries of the sea and sky, and all lissome lies and winsome ways of a woman’s wink, and more of the conundra of the cannonade than other cunts kin count!” He frowned at a sudden thought. “Also not bad with a fiddle.”
Gavin took a deep breath. “You know why we’re doing this?” Gavin asked.
Gunner ignored him. “Also a fair hand with a fiddle. Also a fine . . . Aha! A fair fine fiddler, too!”
“Do you know why we’re doing this?” Gavin repeated.
“I heard ya! It’s only din a few bays. Days. I ain’t forgot. We go to ensconce our legends in the firmament of the Celestine! They’ll be naming constellations after us. Me mostly, ’tis truth, but there’s stars enough to go ’round.”
“That ain’t the why for me,” Gavin said.
Gunner made his voice small, whiny, mocking: “ ‘We’re already legends!’ says you. I know. So why for you? You really think you’ll save your lady’s skin? From the master o’ them?” Gunner threw his chin toward his Order crew, meaning Grinwoody.